Magazines should not just duplicate their content online, but rather use the medium as an opportunity to engage differently with users, according to one of the panellists at today’s MediaTel Group seminar on the ‘Future of Consumer Magazines’.
Duncan Edwards, chief executive of The National Magazine Company, said: “Our perspective is not to put our content online for free. The content that we put on our various websites is different, and the purpose of the kind of engagement that we are trying to create in the online community is different to the kind of engagement that we are trying to create in print.
“Ink on paper is fantastic for long spells of concentration, for copy heavy features, but actually the current technology for screen based consumption isn’t that good. It’s a lot less comfortable to read long, copy heavy articles.
“What we’re trying to do is use online content to provide context for community interaction, and it’s a very different thing. So you will not see the feature content of our magazines pasted onto our websites for people to read.
“Also, I think the type of engagement [online] is different as well.”
Caroline McDevitt, managing director of IPC Advertising, agreed with Edwards that digital offerings should not just re-use print content.
“Not unlike Duncan, we’re looking to build communities through our websites, and importantly, we’ve developed two portals to do just that, to draw-in communities from several magazines. Their experiences will be entirely different online – what they’re looking for online will be different,” she said.
Meanwhile, Mike Soutar, chief executive of ShortList Media, said that consumers only really use online for three things: search, communications and transactions.
He added: “Actually, there are limited opportunities for content providers and magazine publishers like us, to be involved in those parts, because we don’t create tools, we create content – 95% of businesses that make real money online are tool based, they are useful, they enable you as a consumer to do things. So I think that there are fantastic opportunities for the magazine industry, but there are fantastic opportunities for everybody else.
“We own our brands and they are very powerful primers to motivate people, to get them from the print product to online, but actually… as soon as we’re online, the in-built advantages stop.”
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